Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

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Subjunctive Meaning

Cartoon diva Agnes said to her friend Trout:

“I think it’s very important that everyone likes me.”

Notice that she did not use the subjunctive voice, which was probably intended. It changes the meaning. In this sentence, she’s saying that everyone does like her, and that’s important. The subjunctive would be:

“I think it’s very important that everyone like me.”

This means that it’s important to her that people like her, but they don’t necessarily, and this is most likely true with Agnes.

            People often misuse the subjunctive or don’t use it when they should. I don’t know if they’ve stopped teaching it in school or it doesn’t matter that much to people because usually the meaning is clear enough. We often say, “If I was rich…” instead of “If I were rich…” and the “if” signifies that this is a conditional statement. But sometimes the use of the subjunctive can change meaning, which is why it exists.

Vigilant Mike

Mike Sykes followed up about “vigil”:

“The eve of a festival or holy day, as an occasion of religious observance. A devotional watch, esp. the watch kept on the eve of a festival or holy day; a nocturnal service or devotional exercise."
            I have a photo print of Edward VII [d. 1910], autographed (in pencil) by George V "in remembrance of your vigil". It was presented to my grandfather who was a Yeoman of the Guard.
            In days of old, it was customary for a squire to keep a vigil on the night before he became a knight.

Coincidentally, I had just read about the 1936 death of King George V in Thrones and Dominations, a book outlined by Dorothy Sayers and completed after her death by someone not as good. I assume the historical description is fairly accurate, though. After the King’s death was announced, many people dressed in black for mourning as they would for a family member.

            About “working poor” Mike commented:

The article could be retitled as "How to win an argument when you don't have a case"….It assumes that some poor don't work. Like the idle rich.

Some poor work and some don’t. Likewise, probably most rich people work, while not so many inherit wealth.

Viewed Between the Teeth of Her Very Own Comb

Found on Facebook:

those scientific professor types dont understand a lot of stuff about life.. even if it's right in front of them .. I married an engineer and I just have to love him as he is without taking the worlds ideas of what is right or wrong and just love him like he's normal. It works pretty well as he's a babe in the woods at life too..~! It's hard to find a truely innocent man.. What a joy he is when viewed between the teeth of his very own comb..

            We've had twenty good years and his silvery hair is growing so thin that soon he won't need that comb! :-}

I just had to ask this person if “viewed between the teeth of his very own comb” is an old expression or if it was personal. She said,

Rhonda as to the teeth of his own comb, i made it up right then. I was thinking of an old timey semi clear clearcomb right then and it just sort of came out.. it happens sometimes when we write, doesnt it ?! :-)

Oddly enough, this person belongs to a Facebook page for Correct Spelling, Punctuation and Apostrophe Use. But she’s a good writer despite her own punctuation etc. I’m trying to get a fix on the comb phrase so I can apply it with some general meaning. It’s too good to forget.

Zed

Daily Writing Tips said the English Language Central Commission has decided to remove the letter Z from the English language. It took me a while to remember that it was April First. Meanwhile, I was searching for the ELCC, but thankfully there is no such thing. Not that there couldn’t be. The French have their Académie française and once we’ve been thoroughly Europeanized, who knows?

Unsuccessful Treatment of Writer's Block

Improbable Research has recognized the research on writer’s block. It won’t take long to read the report.

China Smack

A web site called China Smack lists various acronyms, slang, and other expressions commonly used on the Web by Chinese speakers/writers (some obscene). I don’t know how useful this could be to most of us, and I have no way of knowing how to pronounce anything, but here’s one interesting entry:

[rénròusousuo / ren2 rou4 sou1 suo3]
noun./verb.
“Human flesh search” or “human flesh search engine” is the Chinese name for when people work together on the internet to find information for a common goal. To “ren rou” is a verb.

China Smack also has reader comments on Google’s decision to leave the China market.

The Naming of Flowers

The 2010 Old Farmer’s Almanac has an article about plants that were named for people, along with a sidebar about Carl Linnaeus, who said, “If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too”:

Nicotiana: Jean Nicot

Begonia:  Michel Begon

Magnolia:  Pierre Magnol

Plumeria:  Charles Plumier

Camellia:  Georg Joseph Kamel

Kalmia:  Pehr Kalm

Gardenia:  Alexander Garden

Wisteria:  Caspar Wistar

Forsythia:  William Forsyth

Kerria:  William Kerr

Poinsettia:  Joel Roberts Poinsett

There should still be time to pick up your copy of the Almanac.

Special

In an old copy of Mental Floss (Sept.-Oct. 2007), an article about Gypsies in Romania illustrates the great difficulty journalists have in expressing anything with accuracy or truth.

            The Gypsies, or Roma, have a long history in Europe. The article sub-head reads, “From Self-Segregation to Institutionalized Racism, Why Bulgaria’s ‘Gypsies’ Have Struggled to Integrate.”

            The article elaborates on how the Roma don’t try to assimilate into the cultures of the countries they live in, don’t speak the languages of their host countries fluently, and this is by choice, and the values of the Roma are not always the values of Western countries, but somehow that’s translates into “institutionalized racism”, on the part of everyone but the Gypsies, of course.

            Along the same lines, this week I happened to be talking to someone who has a friend who’s taught in Hawaii for many years. Back in the ‘80s she taught native children who were always placed in “special needs” classes even though they were as intelligent as the other children in public schools, but they couldn’t pass the IQ tests. As it turns out, the native children grow up speaking their native Hawaiian tongue and really don’t learn English until they enter school, so of course they have “special needs”. But this phrase is a euphemism for retarded. Yet it sounds as though the children are victims of “institutionalized racism”. I can hardly bear the word “special” in almost any context, it’s become so weasely.

            Anyway, the Mental Floss writer admitted that “to be fair, not all of the blame for Bulgaria’s ‘Roma problem’ should fall on racism or discrimination”. The Roma “protect their culture” which means not learning the other language, so they can’t get many jobs, etc. But if they really wanted jobs, they’re bright enough to figure out what’s required. Journalists are often so intent on twisting any story to fit the standard ideology that they can’t see what’s in front of their faces.

NOW:  Kindle for PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPhone, Tablet Computers

Although I’ve published half a dozen books, stories, and articles for Amazon’s Kindle reader under the name Rhonda Keith, I haven’t yet bought a Kindle myself. I’m waiting for the price to drop, and I’m not sure how I’d like reading an entire book on a small device. However, it has great advantages, mostly that of being easily portable. So is a book, but the Kindle can carry a library of books. Usually the cost of a download is under $10. Someday I’ll get one.

            Meanwhile, Kindle publications can now be downloaded for other devices, including your basic computer:

• Kindle for Tablet Computers
• Kindle for iPhone
• Kindle for PC
• Kindle for Mac
• Kindle for BlackBerry

I downloaded Kindle for PC but haven’t yet ordered a book. I’ll report when I do.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Put parents on their children's health insurance

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Obama care will allow parents to keep their children -- that is, their adult offspring -- on their insurance up to...

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ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS in CafePress:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Y-u M-y A-----y Be a W----r

Two people solved last week’s puzzle: 

            W--t g--s a----d the i------t c---s a----d F------k

                        is

            What goes around the internet comes around Facebook.

I thought not capitalizing internet might throw some people off, but Pat Geiger and Dave deBronkart got it and chose to tell me about it. Dave said he didn’t really want another book to add to his stack but I talked him into it. Herb Hickman fooled around with “What goes around the idiots” and “What goes around the iconoclasts” because he said all our books are in Latin. I really need to clear out the bookshelves.

            Pat received my extra copy of Postmodern Pooh by Frederick Crews. I’ve written about this book before, the brilliant sequel to the brilliant Pooh Perplex (1964). Crews satirized various schools of literary criticism extant in 1964, and 40 or so years later updated us on postmodernism, one of the tragedies of my one year of doctoral work. These books are essentials for every English major and for anyone who wants to understand the changes in the intellectual landscape in literary critique and in other fields such as sociology and history in the last few decades.

            Dave received a book that’s too much fun to put on the bottom of his pile of necessary reading, The Ignobel Prizes, but now that I’ve sent the book off I don’t remember which volume it was. It doesn’t matter, it’s all good. The Ignobel Prizes are presented by Improbable Research every year for real and outstanding and silly accomplishments in science and literature. I attended one of the award ceremonies a few years ago at Harvard and I recommend it to everyone in the vicinity. Today, the home page for IR features a link to George Mason University’s Speech Accent Archive, with recording of various accents reading the same paragraph.

Pen of Iron

In the March 8, 2010 Wall Street Journal, Stephen Miller reviewed Pen of Iron: American Prose and The King James Bible by Robert Alter, which is about literary style, now generally ignored by the aforementioned postmodernists. Much of the great writing in America, and speech writing in the case of Abraham Lincoln, has been influenced by the KJV. If not a perfect translation, it is one of the most beautiful and moving pieces of writing in English.

            Alter notes that the average American used to be familiar with the language of the Bible, but people today are not. It is a great loss, not only to style, but to comprehension, since so many people don’t understand the allusions and metaphors common in everyday English that came from the KJV (and from Shakespeare too).

            This week I also happened to hear a discussion on TV that explained one of the linguistic religious mysteries. Maybe you’ve heard some preachers, often fundamentalists or Southern ministers, say “believe on Jesus Christ.” This was always a puzzle since normally we say “believe in” something. But there’s a reason for it. The Bible has a passage in original Greek, pistuein eis, which is closer to “believe on” or “unto” which means something more like believing into something, in the sense that true belief means you are really inside the object/subject of belief. It made more sense when the Ph.D. scholar on TV explained it.

Twisted Cliches

·        From the web:

I love Miss Manners like white loves rice, or umm rather.. oh well I don't know.

Did the writer run out of steam after only 15 words (not counting “umm”)?

·          From someplace on TV that I don’t remember, possibly LA Ink, my current reality TV weakness (and no, I don’t have any tattoos yet):

It’s not rocket surgery.

This is likely a purposeful combining of “rocket science” and “brain surgery”. Cute.

Odiogo

Dave DaBee turned me on to Odiogo, a technology for translating a web page into a digitalized voice. I installed the link on the blog page where I post Parvum Opus (http://cafelit.blogspot.com) and now you can listen to the weekly PO. It’s a little weird and more than a little imperfect, but it’s definitely functional and would be useful for someone with poor vision. You can also download it for podcast.

            The voice is a man’s voice (which is more pleasing to me than a woman’s if it’s not me reading my own material). The intonation, the rises and falls within a sentence, usually sound natural. The voice rises just before a question mark. But it is automated so it can’t be perfect.

            I listened to last week’s PO and it took about 9 or 10 minutes to get through the text, not counting the end matter which repeats every week, which might be another 10 minutes or so.

            The beginning, with “W--t g--s a----d the i------t c---s a----d F------k”, is of course unintelligible, and I noticed “I’ve reed about cuts” instead of “I’ve read about cuts.”

            The combination of the bad Russian writer plus the digitized voice makes for an interesting international SNAFU.

            The loss of precision in a column about exactitude in language is acceptable until the technology is perfected, which may be never since some readings need a human mind. But most of the meaning can be gleaned by listening once, and with more, the audio Parvum Opus should be reasonably intelligible to most people.

Verbing It

The other day a neighbor who was repairing his front door said, “I’m hillbillying it.” I assume he meant something like jerryrigging (I know some of you say juryrigging), that is, kluging or doing a shoddy job. He’s the same guy who ingeniously tied an aerosol can horn device to his rearview mirror, presumably because his regular horn was broken. He is kind of a hillbilly who has a sense of humor about it, which is good because he doesn’t have the money to do everything up slick. He’s been chopping firewood all winter.

Maneuverable

The 2010 Old Farmer’s Almanac has a good article about manure with an etymology of the word (page 175). It actually comes from the same root as “maneuver” (manuoperare in Latin). It’s all about manual labor.

            Interesting legal note from dict.org:

MANURE, Dung. When collected in a heap, it is considered as personal   property, but, when spread, it becomes a part of the land and acquires the   character of real estate. Alleyn, 31; 2 Ired. R. 326.

The online version has three quiz questions on the home page:

·        In the Bible there is a reference to shields and bucklers. What are bucklers? - http://www.almanac.com/advice/question

·        What word is that which by having a single letter transposed becomes its own opposite? - http://www.almanac.com/calendar/puzzle [Actually two letters will be transposed or switched with each other. You could look at it either way.]

·        Where did the phrase "round robin" come from when referring to a letter? - http://www.almanac.com/advice/question

No prizes this time since the answers are right there. Would anybody like more quizzes?

            The Old Farmer’s Almanac is also available for podcast.

BEFORE and AFTER

Note the new shirt design in CaféPress:

             BEFORE AND AFTER

BEFORE is on the front, AFTER on the back. This design is shown on two shirt styles but can be put on other styles, except the dark colors, which can only be printed on the front.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

The executive order against tax-funded abortions is a fraud

Monday, March 22, 2010

Obama's executive order prohibiting government funding of abortion bears examination. Lawyers say an...

Undue process of law

Monday, March 22, 2010

Obama insisted that Americans don't care about Congressional process. He doesn't. This lawyer, this...

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ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS in CafePress:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

W--t g--s a----d the i------t c---s a----d F------k

Did you k--w t--t y--r b---n o--y r---s the f---t and l--t l-----s and it d----t m----r if the l-----s in b-----n are j-----d up you can s---l r--d it p-------y!!

10….9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…

Get it? How about this, which showed up yet again, on Facebook:

Did you konw taht yuor barin olny raeds the frist and lsat ltrtes and it doenst mtater if the ltters in bteewen are jmubeld up you can sitll raed it prfeeclty!!

OK, you can read this, because all the letters are there. I don't believe your brain reads only the first and last letters. If that were true, you'd have no problem with that sentence full of blanks, which I constructed to prove a point. While you can read the second sentence, you don't read it "perfectly" but you read it rather easily (despite the faulty punctuation also) because all the letters are there, and in the words of two or three letters they kept the middle letters in the correct position. Meanwhile, your brain is working to sort out the middle letters in the longer words. You are reading them, you can't block them from your vision, so your brain can use them. But if your eye and brain couldn't pick them up at all, you'd have that first sentence and the title.

Figured out the headline yet? Anyone who gets it will receive a book from somewhere in our bookshelves.

Old Words

Also gleaned from Facebook (but better than the spelling flim-flam) was The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man, which includes archaic vocabulary such as:

Admiral of the Red: A person whose very red face evinces a fondness for strong potations.

All-overish: Neither sick nor well; the premonitory symptoms of illness. Also the feeling which comes over a man at a critical moment, say just when he is about to “pop the question.” Sometimes this is called, “feeling all-over alike, and touching nowhere.” [I’ve read this, maybe in one of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries from the 1920s and ‘30s.]

Cat-heads. A woman’s breasts. Sea phrase.

Cupboard Love. Pretended love to the cook, or any other person, for the sake of a meal. My guts cry cupboard; i.e. I am hungry.

Cut. To renounce acquaintance with any one is to cut him. There are several species of the CUT. Such as the cut direct, the cut indirect, the cut sublime, the cut infernal, etc. The cut direct is to start across the street, at the approach of the obnoxious person, in order to avoid him. The cut indirect is to look another way, and pass without appearing to observe him. The cut sublime is to admire the top of King’s College Chapel, or the beauty of the passing clouds, till he is cut of sight. The cut infernal is to analyze the arrangement of your shoe-strings, for the same purpose. [I’ve read about cuts, though etiquette experts say cutting is unacceptable. But some people need to be cut.]

Dash-fire. Vigor, manliness.

Firing A Gun. Introducing a story by head and shoulders. A man, wanting to tell a particular story, said to the company, “Hark; did you not hear a gun? — but now we are talking of a gun, I will tell you the story of one.” [Note “by head and shoulders”, also a new one to me. Anyway, this is a useful technique.]

Gullyfluff. The waste — coagulated dust, crumbs, and hair — which accumulates imperceptibly in the pockets of schoolboys.

Gunpowder. An old woman.

Heavy Wet. Malt liquor — because the more a man drinks of it, the heavier and more stupid he becomes.

Month of Sundays. An indefinite period, a long time. [Still used, of course.]

Out of Print. Slang made use of by booksellers. In speaking of any person that is dead, they observe, ”he is out of print.”

Tune the Old Cow Died of. An epithet for any ill-played or discordant piece of music. [Used by A. E. Houseman in one of my favorite poems.]

A useful reference if you read anything published before the 20th century.

Indiglish

Chris Stephens wrote about bad selling techniques in his blog Minddynamite, but follow the link about how to learn to speak with a Middle Eastern accent. Chris also mentioned Indiglish (also known as Englian), which is what you get when you call a service tech in India. Sounds like it’s what you say when you’re indignant (or possibly indigenous). Anyway India is not Middle Eastern, it’s Asian. It looks like it’s in the middle of Asia, whereas what we call the Middle East looks like it’s Western Asia. Sort of like the U.S. Mid-West is really Mid-East.

I don’t think we have Middle Eastern service techs yet. Personally I don’t want to be hearing “Allahu Akbar” when I’m trying to find out why Yahoo Mail is screwing up again.

The Slow No

A Canadian caller to the Dennis Miller show said his mother had cancer and was being given the “slow no”, meaning delays in treatment, meaning no medical treatment. He brought his mother to the States for medical care.

From Vigilance to Completion

Since ancient times, monks have had regular hours for prayer, which are called:

Vigils: night
Matins: dawn
Lauds: dawn
Prime: 6 a.m., first hour
Terce: 9 a.m., third hour
Sext: noon, sixth hour
Nones: 3 p.m., ninth hour
Vespers: sunset
Compline: before bed

I went to camp for a week when I was a kid, where we had prayers at vespers, so that’s the only word of this list that fixed itself in my memory. I had to look up the rest.

Vigils: Of course we all know vigilant — wake, watch. The night watch makes sense.

Matins: From Matuta, Roman goddess of morning. Ever hear of her?

Lauds: Praises, like the song “Morning Has Broken”.

Prime: Obviously, number one.

Terce: Obviously, number three.

Sext: Ditto six.

Nones: Ditto nine.

Vespers: Means evening.

Compline: Related to Latin completa/completus.

Fred says he thinks Vigils may be Anglican. In Catholic monasteries, Vigil is the watch over the body of a dead monk before burial. Daily, after about five hours sleep, Lauds directly follows Matins and together they last about three hours. Prime, Terce, Sext, and Nones are about half an hour each. Vespers is long, and is followed by Compline.

Jobs You Can’t Get Anymore

Mike Sykes sent along another old poem from his stock, “I Was a Bustlemaker.” There probably are still a couple of bustlemakers around, though, making bustles for movies and theater companies.

Terms of Engagement

Ryan Scott Welch, in writing about controlling your own terms of political argument, said:

Never let them use "working poor" because that assumes that only poor people work.

That hadn’t occurred to me. I always thought the term distinguished between poor people who work and those who don’t, which makes another though equally valid point.

Marriage Agency Albatross

I received an e-mail from a Russian lady who wishes possibly to marry me, which I must decline, but perhaps some of you will be as charmed by her writing as I was (I can send you her e-mail address). Here are excerpts:

Hello my new friend!!!

Thanks you for a prompt reply!!!

Your electronic address, to me allowed in "Marriage Agency Albatross" my city which cooperates with sites of acquaintances.

For the certain payment of money to me electronic addresses of the foreign men, wishing to get acquainted with girls allowed.

I am interested in search foreign men as I do not like mentality of Russian men!!!

And you like mentality of your women?????

I can forgive much, but only not treachery and lie!

And you are capable to forgive treachery and lie????

I from Russia, live in village Kuzhener.

I was born January 22, year 1981, my growth of 169 centimeters, in family I the unique child.

I was not married, children at me are not present.

I have two higher educations, economic and legal.

I studied the English language at school and at universities.

I talk in English much better, than I write.

Mine favourite kitchen Russian and Italian.

My hobby, collection of ancient coins, and also I write poems.

Sometimes I like to run on fresh air.

In the childhood I was fond of art gymnastics and consequently I have beautiful appearance.

I do not smoke a cigarette, alcohol I use in small dozes, I love red wine and cold champagne.

With impatience I wait your answer, your new familiar of Russia!!!

Elena

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

About my March 16 item below on Obama’s promising 3,000% reduction in costs: It was rightly pointed out that this was a straw man argument since he probably just flubbed it or his teleprompter writer did, though he wasn’t thinking and the audience applauded. Nevertheless, I’ll put my straw man up against your straw man any day. That particular piece was quoted, much to my surprise, on Special Report with Bret Baier on Tuesday.

Health care is not like the Internet

Thursday, March 18, 2010

The Internet is one reason Americans may be more open, more vulnerable actually, to a huge, hulking, centralized...
Obama says 3,000% lower insurance payments are possible

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Monday in Strongsville, Ohio, Obama said that if his health care bill passes, American employers could wind up...
Billions for projects stimulate more questions than jobs

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Below is a list of 102 projects to be funded by the stimulus package. There will be a lot more questions created by...
ACORN goes underground for the time being

Thursday, March 11, 2010

ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is leaving Ohio. Maybe. The 1851 Center for...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Herbal

Herb Hickman sent another headline to serve as a punctuation exercise for the rest of us, from the new-to-me web site "This Is True":

NEAT TRICK: "Man Shot in Chest, Leg Knocks on Door for Help" – Dayton    (Ohio) Daily News headline

Reminds me of the boy whose arms were torn off by a tractor, who then managed to get back to house without bleeding on his mom’s new carpet and called for help.

            Herb wrote more on Grabberwochy, the WWII parody Mike Sykes sent (who’s mentioned, by the way, in Harvard Magazine):

I waited more than a shortened month [February] for some volunteer common tater to common tate some explanation of "Grabberwochy." [PO 356] None has.

            I know just enough to recognize that this Michael Barsley wrote with some knowledge of history and of geography and of jabberwocky, so is presumably not American. [Slap!]  But with everything else, I google it and find he seems to be American, author of a lot of books going all the way back to the events surrounding Danzig that he seems to allude to in Grabberwochy.  Definitely someone I should remember hearing about, and will now have a big curiosity about unless and until I find some of his stuff and read it.

            I don't even find, nor do I know, anything in depth about Danzig. 

            My German prof was from the free city of Danzig, a teenager and language student there around 1940.  Danzig was somehow not considered actually Poland, as I recall his story, at least not by Hitler. When Hitler treatied up with Stalin and savaged Poland, young Ulrich and other Danzig folk were considered German (by the Third Reich).  Ulrich was drafted into the Luftwaffe. He didn't have much of a Luftwaffe career.

            But he didn't reminisce and tell of it to be telling war stories.  Ulrich was a language student, and the stories were language stories.  The main thing Ulrich did in the Luftwaffe was to get captured and held prisoner — not in a prisoner of war camp but on a military base run by the yanks.  Still just a teen-ager, he had some menial work assignments, in part making use of his English/German language skills. 

            At the base, the Americans attempted to control and direct the local Germans’ activities in large part through posting lots of signs to say you must not do this and that.  A sign typically said in big bold letters, "DU MUSS NICHT . . . (blah, blah, blah)"  Those were all language errors, but of course a little teen-age POW had no contact with anyone having the authority to make a correction.  So when a sign said, "DU MUSS NICHT . . . (loiter in this area)", Ulrich would while away the afternoon loitering in that area.  All he wanted was a chance to explain that "DU MUSS NICHT . . . " did not mean "YOU MUST NOT . . . "  In German, the "nicht" simply nullified the "muss."  What the sign said to every German on the base, was "YOU DON'T HAVE TO LOITER IN THIS AREA."  And all those other signs just said you don't have to do this and you don't have to do that.  If they wished to say you must not do a thing, they'd have to use the cognate of the English word "dare."  "YOU DARE NOT . . . ," translated literally. "DU DARFST NICHT!"  Alas, the yanks just looked at Ulrich as he insolently loitered in front of the sign that forbade that behavior.  None ever confronted him over it.

He had to go to the U.S. and get a job teaching German for the Ohio State University, to get even.

Transparency

A guy on Facebook said he used to be complimented for his honesty and directness, but now he’s complimented for his transparency: “No wonder cars keep running into me in the crosswalks.”

            Funny guy. But I also saw (again on Facebook) “transparent” used as an insult. Sarah Palin was attacked as shallow and transparent, meaning of course that the writer can see through her only to find bad things. Whereas the promised transparency of the Obama administrative dealings would be all good, if it had occurred.

Man-Made

Larrey Anderson, in “The Pathetic God of Environmentalism”, noticed something I hadn’t thought of before:

Their god is vulnerable because of the "pollution" (most specifically, CO₂ — a naturally occurring chemical compound) produced by human beings and our modern industrial society. This defilement of the atmosphere has caused (notice the gender used in the description) "man-made global warming."

Why not woman-made, I’d like to know? I’ve never heard even the most radical feminist complain about global warming being credited only to men. Or how about person-made or human-made global warming? (I know there was a flurry of concern about bovine flatulence contributing to global warming, but I think that idea has disappeared like flatus in the wind.)

Hath not a woman autos? Hath not a woman footprints of carbon;

is she not fed with the same inorganic food, hurt with the same tsunamis,

warm'd and cool'd by the same extremes of weather
as a man is? If we exhale, is it not carbon dioxide?

If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Jobs of Yesteryear

NPR has an interesting feature on obsolete jobs. Some of these are jobs I could and would do: lector, copy boy, typesetter. Actually, typesetters remain, but usually are the original authors of the manuscripts to be typeset, who type their manuscripts on computer. The typesetter just adds formatting code to the document file. The very first typesetters of movable wood type might be publisher, writer, typesetter, and bookseller all rolled in one. Computers plus the internet make it possible for anyone to do the same.

            Incidentally, they say “lay type” on the web site. I’ve always heard “set type”.

Who do you say I am?

Johanna Markind writes about the practice of The New York Times and Washington Post in referring to Jesus Christ as Jesus but dropping the “Christ”, while referring to Mohammed as Prophet Mohammed. Does this mean anything? I don’t know if it’s a new policy, but implication is that Jesus is to be considered only as a historical figure; “Jesus” was the name of the man, whereas “Christ” means the anointed and refers to his divinity. Mohammed has never been considered a deity, but “the Prophet Mohammed” seems to specify “the” one and gives a nod to the sensibilities of Muslims in manner that’s not done for Christians. Or Jews, for that matter, since Moses, Markind says, is traditionally called "Prophet" or "Rabbeinu" ("our teacher”) by Jews.

Markind says:

The Times, the AP, and Reuters all have style manuals setting forth their policies about usage for proper names like "Jesus." Both the Times and Reuters manuals explicitly caution against using the term "Christ" when referring to Jesus because it is a theological term, "a title non-Christians would not give him," as Reuters' handbook says.

            Similarly, the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage does not list "Prophet Muhammad" as an acceptable usage. It says only: "Muhammad. Use this spelling for the name of the prophet of the Muslim religion." Both Reuters and the AP Stylebook identify Muhammad as "Prophet," but neither explicitly states whether "Prophet Muhammad" is a preferred, disfavored, or neutral usage.

But it seems in practice the papers use “Jesus” and “Moses”, but “Prophet Muhammad”.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Unemployment extension shows government lacks confidence in economy

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The federal government has extended the period of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. This is a bad sign for several...
Cincinnati does not need separate but equal languages

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Ohio was never part of Mexico, like California and Texas, and Ponce de Leon probably never got this far north....

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Jujubes

From Facebook:

>>))) "Thank god for statues of limitation."

Minimalist art? Then there are the statues of imitation, which are portraits.

>>))) “I do not go hunting. The word hunting implies a chance of failure. I go killing.”

This is from a Marine veteran. I like the precision.

From a crossword puzzle book:
>>)))Definition:  “ferret out” = to uproot and drive out

I don’t think so. Someone must have been thinking of driving out ferrets. The meaning is actually to find through persistent investigation (maybe this is something ferrets are good at). Another rodent phrasal verb is “rat out” which means to squeal on somebody, to fink, to be a stool pigeon.

…by any other name would be a Tweet

Eric Cummings in Daily Writing Tips discusses what to call the things that people write and upload to blogs and other web sites. He feels that the traditional terms of publishing (e.g. “article”) are too formal but some of the newer Web-specific terms (e.g. “blog” or “blog entry”) sound too trivial.

            If it looks like a duck online and quacks like a duck, call it a duck. It makes sense to use traditional publishing terminology for comparable pieces of writing online. Just as some airplane terminology was borrowed from the vocabulary of ships — boarding, crew, captain, even airship — newer forms of publishing may sometimes reasonably borrow the language of older forms of publishing, if the content is parallel.

            Parvum Opus began as e-mail, but I never considered it a personal letter, though some e-mail is personal communication. I considered it something like a newspaper or magazine column, though not an “article” since each issue is part of a series on a related theme, the English language. “Column” comes from the physical layout of a newspaper or magazine where parallel blocks of text are laid out on the page. Web pages and even e-mail can be laid out in parallel columns. Later, when I started posting PO to two blog sites, I still considered it a column. Only the appearance changed, not the content or intent.

Carrying Baggage

I had suggested adding an apostrophe to:

Courtesy Storage of Passengers

Baggage is Not Permitted

Thus,

Courtesy Storage of Passenger’s

Baggage is Not Permitted

Bill Roberts suggested Passengers’, making it plural. Mike Sykes also questioned my apostrophic suggestion: “It might [help], but is that really where you would put it?” OK, I concede that the singular “passenger’s” would not be the best solution.

Bill then added, like the saucy minx he is:

“Officer, that baggage ran off with my luggage!”

“Baggage” isn’t used much any more to mean a pert girl or a prostitute. Nowadays a person with baggage is one with too many emotional attachments to the past.

            He also contributed this regarding the scarlet letter:

From the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton contest, runner up in the Historical Fiction department:

On a fine summer morning during the days of the Puritans, the prison door in the small New England town of B----n opened to release a convicted adulteress, the Scarlet Letter A embroidered on her dress, along with the Scarlet Letters B through J, a veritable McGuffey's Reader of Scarlet Letters, one for each little tyke waiting for her at the gate.

By Joseph Aspler, Kirkland, QC, Canada

Now there was a piece of baggage.

Warming Wishes

Mike Sykes wrote about global warming:

You might like to consider that the vast majority of deniers/skeptics are not climatologists and many are not professional scientists at all.

The vast majority of human-caused global warming acolytes are also not climatologists or scientists. And as Herb Hickman, scientist, remarked here recently, you don’t have to be a scientist to venture an opinion even in a professional journal. Also, many scientists are following the grant money. Science is influenced by politics as well.

Moreover, when errors have been trumpeted, responses have often been played down (or do you prefer "downplayed"?).

In the US, “downplayed” is probably more common. As for errors, what I can no longer avoid calling the mainstream media has only recently reported errors and chicanery on the part of the IPCC.

Inevitably Dave

The inevitable Dave DaBee said he doesn’t inevitably hear "redistributing wealth" in the company name Saalfeld Redistribution. I guess I read more about politics, while Dave is doing more useful stuff with his time under the name Dave DeBronkart.

            He also asked, “btw, what is ‘evitable’? What is ‘evit,’ other than the root of ‘e-vite’?” The Latin roots mean un + avoidable, probably related to “evade” also. Dict.org lists the word “evitable” but gives no example of usage. I guess it’s one of those words with no natural positive companion (like “disgruntled” has no “gruntled”); I’ve never heard or read “evitable” and I’d advise against using it.

Unhand That Pancake!

On a local radio cooking program, Marilyn Harris said that every country has its own form of cooked dough, like crepes or tortillas, and that our version is pancakes, “which of course we stole”.

            Now hold on a minute. The English make the pancakes we’re familiar with and have for a long time. When they settled in America, did they steal pancake recipes from the Indians? I think not. I think they remembered how to cook them. Their ancestors pounded grain on rocks and cooked pancakes in the fire like everyone else in the world. When the Mexicans moved (or stayed) north of the border, did they steal tortillas? Did the Cajuns steal crepes? Did the Jews steal latkes? Did the Russians steal blinis? WE Americans brought all kinds of recipes along to the new world.

            “We stole pancakes” sounded like an automatic verbal tic from someone who thinks “we” (meaning Americans of English extraction and maybe the British Empire before us) “stole” everything from all the other poor benighted people in the world.

            I interpreted her remark this way because of all that political reading. “Which of course we stole” has a familiar ring, and she wasn’t talking about swiping a recipe from a restaurant or a neighbor, or even figuring out a recipe.

Corex: World in a Grain of Silicon, Not Silica

Herb Hickman wrote a lot about silica:

For the record, before it goes to join all the spent ascii code in the cybercemetery*, that grain is a tad confusing. Silica, remember, is the oxide of silicon, silicon dioxide, familiar to all of us as the beach sand and also quartz and I think flint too. And let us not forget cristobalite. At your wedding was a stern but kindly old uncle** who revealed that he, his company or himself, was the manufacturer or producer of a substantial portion of the world's cristobalite. That I was familiar with. Quartz and the much rarer cristobalite and tridymite are the crystalline free silicas that cause the industrial lung disease silicosis, which has hastened the death of many a worker.

Fascinating in its own right, we take our children to the beach to play in the countless tons of silica there, while restricting silica in the workplace air to extremely small concentrations as it is measured. The devil is in the size of the particles. Those big grains of sand are absolutely incapable of passage through the upper respiratory tract into the terminal bronchioles and alveoli of the lung parenchyma. Grinding in a casting plant or in many other situations makes super fine crystalling silica particles, which by virtue of small size can negotiate the twists and turns of the upper respiratory apparatus and reach the deep lung tissue.

Then bad things can happen. In those deep lung chambers hang out some special cells called pulmonary macrophages. You've instantly recognized*** that means something like "big eaters of the lung." When a hapless airborne bacterium happens to make it all the way into that deep lung tissue, in most cases it will be swallowed by a macrophage. Engulfed is a better word than swallowed. The interior of the macrophage is hell. In there are digestive enzymes that do indeed eat that bacterium in short order, unless it's one of the few varieties that resist. And that's as it apparently should be.

 But when a pulmonary macrophage ingests a particle of crystalline silica, it is the macrophage that commonly dies. And ruptures in the process, releasing those powerful digestive enzymes. And the enzymes don't know whether they're still in a macrophage or not. They just digest, probably chop up proteins they encounter for a while. The delicate lung tissue forms scars -- which means it thickens and toughens -- a process that makes difficult the exchange of gases between the air spaces and tiny blood vessels. On which life is dependent.

So a grain of silica is worthy of study, it don't store any information. For that you need tiny structures of silicon -- not silica and not silicone. Silicon is a hard mineral which -- especially with certain impurities present -- exhibits semiconductor behavior. Silicon is an element, the second most plentiful element in the earth's crust. And after highly technical design and processing, is used to make "chips" that make most all computers work. I don't know if it comes in grains or not.

Thank you for the clarification.

* What does silica or silicon have to do with ascii code?

** Ha.

*** I did.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Adopt a Legislator Constitution Seminar in Columbus

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Adopt A Legislator Constitution Seminar, sponsored by Homemakers of America, will be held Wednesday, March 31,...
Tiger Woods: Medical, Legal, Personal, or Moral Judgment?

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

In today's Cincinnati Enquirer, two unrelated items popped out and landed on the floor together: "experts...
"Reconciliation" means political finagling

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Mike Wilson (Founder, Cincinnati Tea Party and Candidate for Ohio Representative, District 28) clarifies...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Commas Save Lives

Plucked from the slush pile:

Commas, they save lives!

Example:

Let’s eat Grandpa!

Let’s eat, Grandpa!

Keep in mind that “let’s” means “let us” thus needs an apostrophe:

Speaking of apostrophes, Dave DaBee wrote:

Parse this airport sign:

Courtesy Storage of Passengers

Baggage is Not Permitted

As is, it looks like you can store passengers for free, but they can’t have baggage. Does that help? An apostrophe in “Passenger’s” might.

Carnival

Joanna Bogle is a British author who hosts a TV show called Feasts and Seasons, where she explains the significance and traditions of various church holidays and cooks suitable food for each occasion, sort of a Catholic Julia Child. This week she explained that Carnival (as in Rio and Mardi Gras) comes from roots meaning “meat” and “remove”.

Redistributive Justice

I passed a semi the other day that said:

REDISTRIBUTING SUCCESS

SAALFELD

At first I confused this with the Saalfield Publishing Company in Akron, Ohio, a publisher of children’s books where one of my aunts worked when I was a kid. Sometimes she’d visit and bring stacks of coloring books, paper doll books, and other exciting stuff. Unfortunately Saalfield is no more.

Saalfeld Redistribution, coincidentally located in Loveland, Ohio, is a company that buys large miscellaneous inventory to resell in smaller lots to businesses. Its slogan makes sense in a b.s. slogan kind of way, but “redistributing” now inevitably brings to mind “redistribution of wealth”. Reselling products is an innocent pastime; less so is redistribution of anything. You can take away people’s material stuff, and money, and give it to someone else, with the implication that wealth and material goods were “distributed” in the first place, sort of handed around randomly by the Great Distributor. To redistribute success, you would have to imagine that success is distributed. But while a successful business owner, for instance, may share profits with employees and shareholders, success itself can only be earned.

Mank Ind

Maeve Maddox writes on gender neutral language in Daily Writing Tips. The best comment is from one Daniel:

Any discussion of “mankind” cannot be complete without a reference to Jack Handey’s “deep thoughts” on it:

“Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words—’mank’ and ‘ind’. What do these words mean? It’s a mystery, and that’s why so is mankind.”

Recently I permitted myself to use the traditional male pronoun as a generic instead of trying to include every possible gender or twist a singular into a plural (example: “Everyone would like to speak his piece” instead of “speak their piece” or “speak his or her piece”).

Suppose we made sure always to say “he and she” instead of “he”, someone would complain that these two pronouns are heteronormative and leave out shemales and eunuchs, etc.

No problemo inshallah

Bill Roberts wrote about “No problem”:

Some years (okay, decades) back, I did a UNITAS deployment, which involves circumnavigating South America and operating with all of the navies on the way. The standard response was No problemo para mi. They were always right—it never was a problem for them…

… It’s almost as annoying as inshallah—if God wills. If the harbormaster says the tugs will be there at 0830 tomorrow, you have a chance. If the harbormaster says the tugs will be there at 0830 tomorrow inshallah, it’s going to be a long morning at sea detail.

My response to Bill was that the tugs would be there if they weren’t blown up, but then I’m bitter and clinging to my Bible, Beretta, and blog.

From the Uke

Mike Sykes wrote:

About victuals/vittles:

I had the same problem, but, pace Gabby Hayes, the word may be more common in UK. I'm not sure whether it's still true, but the association of inn-keepers was the licensed victuallers, and it's not unusual to come across the phase "pay and victuals", though "pay and rations" is probably more common.

I don’t think victuals is used anymore in the U.S. in licensing departments or much of anywhere; it seems to be archaic.

About bloody:

Curiously enough, it was when I reported for service in the RAF (of which today just happens to be the anniversary) that I discovered how widespread was the use of obscenity. Since then I have some come to tolerate more in others, especially in TV programs that have compensating merits, but still have difficulty articulating some of the words myself. "Bloody" I never had a problem with, though my parents did. I was always rather amused by "abso-bloody-lutely" — does any other language have this kind of intensifier?

I’ve read or heard “abso-f***ing-lutely” over here.

There is a theory, possibly etymythology, that "bloody" was originally a corruption of "by Our Lady", in the same way as "zounds".

About leazing:

By the way, I learned a new word a couple of weeks back, in an episode of this TV series, set in the 1890s. From the context, "leazing" was clearly a synonym of "gleaning", but it's not in the OED. Moreover there are only very few results from Google (other than misspellings of "leasing").

About the scarlet letter:

I'd never heard of the scarlet letter, but I gather it's a badge of the letter "A" for adultery, so it's a badge of guilt. The dead albatross is also a badge of guilt, but it's an attempt to transfer the supposedly collective guilt, and the curse that came with it, from the rest of the crew, who had previously implicated themselves by approving the mariner's action. In actual fact (Wikipedia cites a reference) sailors used to kill them for food.

French Milieu

Bob Oberg wrote:

A French word that I thought had been thoroughly adapted into English is “milieu” (even Word autocorrects the spelling, as I just discovered). But I was startled by this translator’s note for Chardin’s “The Divine Milieu”:

“All Teilhard’s works involve grave problems for the translators, and the present version of The Divine Milieu is the result of much discussion and collaboration. Perhaps what most needs explanation is the retention of the word ‘milieu’ from the original French title. This has been done more by necessity than by choice. The word ‘milieu’ has no exact equivalent in English, as it implies both centre and environment or setting; and even the normal use in English of the word ‘milieu’ has insular associations. One suggested title, In the Context of God, did not meet with the approval of the French committee in charge of the publication of Teilhard’s works and I myself did not feel that another, The Divine Environment, was close enough to the original. As we could reach no agreed solution, we left the word ‘milieu’ in the title.

“As a result of this, it was decided to retain the word ‘milieu’ throughout the text also. Readers are asked to understand this word in the precise French connotation in which it was used by the author.”

I don’t use “milieu” often but now I don’t think I should use it at all. Nevertheless, it may be safe to say that it has assumed an English definition apart from the original French.

Warmist Wishes

First we had global warming (a decade or so after the global cooling scare). That didn’t pan out, so global warming became climate change (“The sky is changing! The sky is changing!”) Thus the evil flat-earther “global warming deniers” (patterned after “Holocaust deniers”) became slightly more respectable “global warming skeptics”. Now that we see that the scientific foundation for the global warming theory has been built on shifting sand, the word “warmists” is popping up more frequently to refer to those of the global warming persuasion. The “ist” suffix may suggest an ideologue or a fanatic.

ymOM

Angie the Anti-Theist posted herself videotaped while having a live chemical abortion on YouTube. She wrote that you can find other “positive abortion stories” online.

Questions: Is “positive abortion story” an oxymoron? Why is her first child not a “parasite”? Note that her YouTube URL ends in “ymOM”.

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Funny Valentines

It’s a little late for Valentine’s Day, but if you forgot the day, like some persons who could be named, celebrate by reading what Mark Steyn, the sharpest and funniest political writer around, wrote about the inadequacy of the word “love” for rhyming, as compared to “amour”. Rhymes are somewhat limited: "above," "dove," "glove," "shove," and "of” (which for some reason he calls a half-rhyme). What can we do with that?

Critters and Vittles

Tom Simon wrote about mispronunciations:

most likely it has to do with the phonetic method of teaching reading.....many children today have been taught by that method (me too).....fine example is the word victuals*which I knew the meaning of but did not learn the correct pronunciation of until many years later. Found out that Gabby Hayes had been using that word all along and not another, when he would ask the cowboys to come for dinner at the chuck wagon. Lots of French words are easily mispronounced and some French phrases are still used now from earlier times, including one heard at every square dance....do-se-do....literally back to back...

Some French words have been Anglicized and some haven’t, at least not entirely, depending usually on how long they’ve been part of the English language.

Tom is also looking for a book, so I pass this along in case anyone has a copy:

…anyone who might have a Missale Romanum, the one published by Benzinger, something I could get fairly inexpensively or free? I am looking for a small hand sized one, not the large version. thanks....

* For those of you who weren’t cowboy fans, “victuals” (food) was always pronounced “vittles” in cowboy movies. Sort of like “critters” for “creatures”.

Bye Bo

When its last speaker died in India, the Bo dialect died. The news report did not say whether or not the language has been preserved in writing or recorded, or how it differed from dialects in the same tribe, though the writer gave a passing slap to Europeans whose diseases decimated tribes. Since the speakers of Bo did not pass it on to their descendants, only linguists (probably mostly Europeans) care that Bo’s time has come and gone.

            How many other languages have come and gone in the history of human beings? Any language whose speakers did not create a written language has an expiration date stamped on it.

            So much has lived and died that we’ll never know about, languages, cultures, animal species. We would like to know them. We would like to keep them. But all may be considered ephemera.

            I’ve been watching the reality series Hoarders, a fascinating intrusion into the lives and homes of compulsive hoarders whose extreme OCD has led them to the brink of losing their houses, mates, and children. It’s not that every scrap in their house hasn’t had some meaning or usefulness at some time, or at least they imagined it did, but no one life can maintain everything that’s ever touched it. Likewise, the earth cannot sustain every bit of creation that sprang out of it, every sparrow’s bones.

Bad Words

Here’s a tolerant take on the word “retarded” as an insult, which came into public earshot recently when Rahm Emmanuel used it. The word simply means slow and also replaced old words such as feeble-minded and simple to describe the mentally handicapped, but because children will use anything as an insult, it was replaced by mentally challenged, developmentally disabled, and other clumsy, pseudo-scientific terms. Emmanuel probably should have just said “stupid” since he was talking about politics.

Apparently he used the F word too, which Paul Schlichta says is going the way of the British “bloody”, so common it’s no longer offensive. There’s a difference, however, because “bloody” simultaneously had a literal and inoffensive meaning (lots of blood) while the F word has for a long time been offensive.

Targets and Albatrosses, No Problem

• Found in an article about layoffs: “Recent hires will be targeted first.” Targeted as a verb always bothers me, although it is a respectable usage. People being targets when they’re not in a shooting war and are unarmed, for instance on the job, is worrisome. Logically, you could say, “Recent hires will be targets first.”
• An even more annoying instance of an annoying substitute for “You’re welcome”: Clerk: Have a nice night. Me: Thank you. Clerk: No problem. It wasn’t a problem for him to wish me a nice night?
• Overheard but I can’t remember where or why: “I’ve got my scarlet letter on. Or is it an albatross?”

The World in a Grain of Silicon

Bill Gunlocke wrote a Luddite rant against Kindle and other such e-book readers (Rage Against the Machine) in his blog A City Reader. I left this comment (I edited slightly here):

I love physical paper books too and I don't think they're going away. But the sheer physical mass is overwhelming sometimes. Paper is heavy. I live in a small place amidst several thousand books. I always wanted to live in a library, but even organizing them is a problem since I arrived after my husband had been accumulating this, his third library, for years.

One good thing about the fact that more people bought Kindle books on Christmas Day than real books is that the last-minute shopper can deliver a gift immediately and not wait for the book to be mailed. And it is a book.

Full disclosure: I'm biased since I have published for Kindle (search Rhonda Keith), and also for Lulu.com, which allows downloads to a computer rather than a special e-book device. The technology allows a writer to bypass the slow publishing process that can eliminate a lot of good writers while a lot of more commercially promising writers get ink. (Not that I'm against the commercial aspects of publishing.)

We should look at e-books as an addition to print, not as a substitute. It's true that the printing press almost completely did away with handwritten manuscripts, but the benefits were worth it. Instead of having to travel across the continent to lay eyes on one of maybe three copies of a manuscript, hundreds or thousands of people had access to any given book. Now the Web makes even rare out-of-print books accessible to almost everyone. Printed paper books are also getting cheaper because of new technology. I don't think we'll be running out of them any time soon.

I think the e-book readers will become more popular as the technology improves and the cost goes down. There’s a great advantage to having lots of books, papers, and magazines at your fingertips in a small package. If you think of it, you can download it. Something like an iPod, but for books. This doesn’t mean the iPod is superior to an LP with great cover art, or to a live musician. Paper books are esthetically more pleasing to the hand and eye than a piece of plastic-encased electronics. But the scope is incredible.

Cellar Door

“Cellar door” has been judged the most euphonious word(s) in the English language, obviously on sound alone, not on the basis of its meaning, though I have some pleasant memories of cellar doors in my grandmothers’ houses, and also of a brand of cookies called Stella Doro which don’t seem to be available in my neighborhood. Grant Barrett wrote about this and other words in The New York Times, some of which have to qualify as onomatopoeic, like hush and lullaby. We have to listen to speech or song in a foreign language to fully appreciate words without meaning, but you can drive the meaning out of any word if you repeat it enough.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Obama's dark vision

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Jonathan F. Keiler writes about Obama's decision to cut funding for NASA in "The Last Shuttle and the Rise...
Commander in Chief of the Corpses

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Why the media flap about Sarah Palin’s writing speech notes on her palm? Because she had referred to Obama as...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Bryan Garner on Legal Language

I have often quoted Bryan Garner in PO; I subscribe to his Usage Tip of the Day. Garner is a lawyer, the editor of Black’s Law Dictionary, and is most meticulous and lucid. He’s written more than 20 books on law and language and I own a copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage. I was happy to learn that he’s on YouTube, where he interviews Chief Justice John Roberts on legal writing, and presents segments of his courses on Legal Writing and Ethical Communications for Lawyers (#1: Don’t lie). See http://www.legalprose.org.

            Did you know there’s something called a sit and squirm test?

            For you lawyers out there on the PO list, and everyone else who has any contact with legalese (alert Dan Erslan):

For his forthcoming Gobbledygook Awards, Bryan A. Garner invites you to send him published examples of particularly bad prose that appeared in 2009, especially examples originating in state and local governments. Extra points if you supply a translation. Please send them to: bgarner@lawprose.org.

There are other Gobbledygook Awards out there, though, including one with Rich Lederer on the Panel, but I’m sure there’s enough gobbledygook to go around.

OTUS

Harry Holland wrote:

POTUS, yes, it's been around a while. I saw it on many a telegraphic cable while with the US Foreign Service. Mostly when he was to visit post.

That had to have been the previous POTUS.

And Mike Sykes wrote:

I've known it for some time, like years. And FLOTUS, SCOTUS though not as common, of course. Could I have got them all from "The West Wing", I wonder?

I don’t watch The West Wing. I had to look up FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) and SCOTUS (Supreme Court etc.). If POTUS sounds powerful, FLOTUS sounds more floaty and floral and feminine. SCOTUS sounds Scottish.

            Then there’s TOTUS — Teleprompter etc. I’ve avoided commenting on Barack Obama’s use of language, as I seldom commented on George W. Bush’s gaffes, but two items of interest arose last week.

            The first is the media flap about Sarah Palin’s speech notes she wrote on her palm. Because she had referred to Obama as a “charismatic guy with a teleprompter” she became fair game or at least game for commentators who don’t like her. But there are several weaknesses in their heavy-handed attacks. Her notes have been called “cheat sheets” and “crib notes” but you can’t really “cheat” on your own speech, even if you have a speechwriter. Also, using notes is not the same as reading an entire speech from a teleprompter, as Obama does. I’ve often used notes to organize what I will say to a classroom, and on the few occasions when I’ve talked to other groups, I’ve used notes, brief outlines or keywords, to remind me of what I want to say, except when I’ve read excerpts from something I or someone else wrote. I can talk on my feet, especially if I plan ahead. Someone even referred to the Palin palm notes as “handgate” as if it is in any way in the same moral universe as Watergate. On the other hand, I thought someone was a bit witty in calling Palin’s palm notes the “redneck teleprompter”, not that she qualifies as a redneck.

The second, earlier incident last week was when Obama pronounced “corpsman” (as in Marine Corps) as “corpse-man” three times in one speech. We all have a bigger reading vocabulary than a speaking vocabulary, which is why we might mispronounce a word we know perfectly well but have never heard. In my fifth grade reading class I labored mightily to say “Nova Scoteeya” and years later as a graduate student, I said something about “Eedin-burg” to a professor, who immediately corrected me: Eddin-boro.

But how can one not have heard of the Marine Corps (core), and of Corpsmen (coremen), especially if you’re commander in chief (CICOTUS)? Could it be a Freudian slip? Perhaps a subliminal message?

            Which leads me to a longtime confusion I’ve had with subliminal and sublimate. I’ve heard way more psychobabble in my life than I have chemical terms: subliminal is like subconscious, you’ve got your sub, your under-thoughts, ergo subliminal, but no matching verb. How would you go subliminal? Not sublimate, which means to go from a solid to a gas without a liquid intermediate state, i.e. raise or elevate matter. Maybe there’s a metaphor there for the mind, but I dunno.

Subliminal and sublimate come from Latin roots meaning below and threshold. Brian Charles Clark has a detailed explanation of the development of these words. I will still always think of subliminal as going under and sublimate, like sublime, as going up.

Crème de la Creme

Mike Sykes also wrote about meditating on “English is the crème de la crème of languages” (which must be done in French):

It can certainly be elegant, eloquent, easy for non-native speakers to learn (so I'm told) and all those good things, but it is difficult to spell, and can be slovenly, ugly and ambiguous. We have more words than most others, but we stole many of them.

I would certainly say it seems to be the most useful language, simply because it's the most widely known second language. It was a polyglot Belgian who told me many years ago that English is the lingua franca of (what was then) the Common Market. I assumed he was punning of franca/francais because French used to be the language of diplomacy.

I wouldn’t say we “stole” words. (The French have stolen plenty of English but the Academie francaise wants to give it back.)

Reminds me of a story I though I told in PO but can’t find, about a black friend who complained to me about white people using the black (she said) phrase “back in the day” (compare to the conventional phrase “back in the old days”). And then a few years later, a black student in an English 101 class I taught was quizzing my knowledge of black slang: “What if I said you’re phat?” Luckily I knew what it meant, and he was disappointed that the proprietary black slang had leaked out via the media. Picture it: Reporters anxious to get a scoop hanging out on the fringes of groups of black youth, eavesdropping, or perhaps a racially ambiguous reporter trying to blend in, to steal the latest slang to pad out a feature on contemporary culture.

In l'esprit d'escalier,* it occurred to me too late that I should have said we (meaning white like me) won’t use your slang if you’ll stop speaking English.

* The spirit of the staircase, i.e., the clever ripostes that occur to you after you’ve already left the room.

The Amish Cook

A little plug for a cooking column I like, The Amish Cook, whose editor is selling several Amish cookbooks. A good deal and a good read, even if you’re not into cooking.

Sound Smarter with a Click

From Overheard in New York:

Guido #1, in thick Staten Island accent: Yo, yo bro, I found this thing on Word, it makes you sound smarter.

Guido #2 in same accent: No way, bro! What is it?

Guido #1: I don't know, it's this thing, you click it and it gives you all these words that make you sound smarter.

Guido #2: What's it called?

Guido #1: Sin... Sinono... Sino-somethin, but I swear to god, bro; it makes you sound smarter.

—St John's University, Staten Island

Tragic

A good column by Alan Fraser, called “A Tragic Use of Language”, on the use, overuse, and misuse of the word tragedy as applied to murder provides classical definitions, one of which is:

a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror

Despite the fact that 9/11 elicited terror, I agree that it’s not a good idea to call these repeated cases of mass murder “tragedies” unless we make the murderer the protagonist. We should be the protagonists, the ones who act, to pursue justice, not therapy. Justice is more cathartic than “How do you feel about that?”

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Muslim-Americans are forced to suffer in wordy silence

Friday, February 5th, 2010

In the Friday, February 5 Cincinnati Enquirer, Momitul Talukdar, a Walnut Hills High School student, wrote...
The truth is out there: OFA

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

The previous article about the Democrat's Organizing for America Internship program (picked up from the Atlas Shrugs blog) was attacked as phony....

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Mucidity

The simplest of word puzzles must be the Word Seek, where you find words in a square of letters; there are a few little variations on this puzzle. One from a March Penny Press magazine is a list of archaic adjectives. Some you can figure out, like otherguess and museful. Some are familiar, such as enow [enough] which I remembered in this verse from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

 A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou

 Beside me singing in the Wilderness —

 Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

I recognized “acold” too, from Shakespeare: “Poor Tom’s acold.”

Some of them I can’t make a secure guess at and would have to look up, but won’t:

Alible

Cramoisy

Curtal

Eyesome

Frontless

Immane

Irriguous

Litten

Mucid

Rathe

Reechy

Scrannel

Selcouth

Soothfast

Unblenched

You could make a new Jabberwocky from this list (though not as good as last’s week’s parody Nazi Jabberwocky from the WWII era, sent by Mike Sykes:

`Twas reechy, and the mucid toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All scrannel were the borogoves,

And the rathe raths outgrabe.

Poets at Play

Yvonne Prete wrote:

Amazon has Poets at Play: a Handbook of Humorous Recitations for $37…. You can also get it from a place in India, in a currency I didn't recognize and hadn't the time to chase down.

She also alerted me to bookfinder.com. But there’s more than one book called Poets at Play. Mike Sykes’ book was edited by Cyril Alington.

The Handbook of Humorous Recitations harks (harkens?) back to the days before TV and radio when students recited poems in school, people memorized stirring patriotic recitations for public events, and the family read or recited to each other in front of the fire.

Incredulous

If I wrote about this before, someone didn’t learn the lesson: I heard someone on TV say “It’s incredulous that…” Incredulous means unbelieving, so it cannot be incredulous, only people can. Incredible means unbelievable, and it can be incredible.

POTUS/SOTUS

The acronym POTUS (President of the United States) seems to be fairly recent, at least I never noticed it before the current incarnation. Used without the article “the”, it’s a particularly effective acronym because not only is its pronunciation easy to figure out (alternating consonants with vowels) but POTUS is reminiscent of the Latin root potens meaning power or ability, which we recognize in words such as potent, potentate, potential, and so on.

            SOTUS popped up when POTUS gave the State of the Union Speech, ordinarily called the State of the Union Address. SOTUS makes a nice parallel to POTUS, which SOTUA wouldn’t.

So True

Mediate on this: “English is the crème de la crème of languages.”

We could say “English is the cream of languages” but we don’t. We would not say “English is the cream of the cream of languages” because we are too modest.

Don’t Fear the Reaper

Jerome Salinger and Howard Zinn both died last Wednesday, January 27.* They were both tall, good-looking writers who fought in World War II.

Salinger was 91. I was one of those who loved The Catcher in the Rye and read a lot of his writing when I was in college. However, I haven’t continued to re-read his work as I have with a number of other writers. I can’t relate to an adorable adolescent who thinks almost everyone is phony, though I could when I was 20. More recently, I also read a couple of bios of Salinger: Dream Catcher: A Memoir by his daughter Margaret, and At Home in the World by girlfriend Joyce Maynard. A writer’s work should stand alone, but he was such a creepy guy that I don’t think I could start reading him now if I didn’t already know his work.

            Howard Zinn was 88. I read none of his work on linguistics, and little on politics, but I did hear him give a talk at a university in the early ‘90s, when I was more likely to agree with his views. But I left the lecture feeling like I wanted to slash my wrists. That can’t be a testimonial to truth. His post-WWII anti-war stance is understandable, but as a Jew, why didn’t he appreciate the necessity of stopping the Nazi war machine? His Wikipedia bio says he wanted to be known as "somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn't have before." He didn’t do it for me and it’s not because I’m one of the powerful elite.

            Pax.

(* As I noted in PO some years ago, oddly enough John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis all died on the same day, November 22, 1963.)

Mike the Sykes

Mike wrote:

Soundex is a boon when you're not sure of the spelling, especially when transliteration is involved; but a bane when the search engine doesn't give you the option. "Did you mean ... ?" can be helpful, but I yearn for the ability to search for something exactly.

If you enter your search term surrounded by quotation marks, in the Google search box, for instance, you will turn up the exact term.

As recently as 3 December 2009, I said:

<quote>

Apocalypso

OED says it comes from "Gk apokalupsis, f. apokaluptein uncover, f. APO- + kaluptein cover", hence "reveal".

So "apocalyptic" means the sort of event that was revealed in the Apocalypse (aka the Book of Revelations), viz Armageddon, four horsemen &c.

</quote>

Sorry I overlooked that. I didn’t use it in PO so I forgot you sent it, but then I ran into the words someplace else. Could it be a sign?

Regarding the story of the Norwegian priest:

Perhaps your tease was a bit unfair, not to the priest so much as to the people who live in the north. If I cared enough I'd look for figures on energy use/carbon footprint of them vs Hawaians — after all, the latter probably use quite a bit on aircon.

But, as you point out, the crucial question is: Who or what are we trying to ensure survival of?

Earth will survive, whatever happens to us, as it has for the past 4.6 billion years.

All the human race can do is try to ensure its own survival as long as possible. And biological diversity has considerable value to the human race.

But life of some sort been around for a billion years or so, and has survived even mass extinctions, even when most species were extinguished. If the dinosaurs thought at all, they must have thought that, after dominating the earth for tens of millions of years, they would last for ever. In comparison, humanity has only just got started.

So we might start by understanding what we mean by 'ecological', given that 'ecology' means the study of something. How can one behave ecologically? Any more than one can behave geographically. Remember 'winsomely' (to find the context, see Act II)?

Reminds me of the way some people (mis-)use the word 'organic'. Still, mustn't get started — life's too short ;-)

Act II of …? Anyway, you are right about the misuse of those words, and you can add “environmentally” to the list.

Crash Blossoms

“Crash Blossoms” is a term proposed for the funny headlines that result when functional words are omitted, as in “Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts”. Is “attacks” a noun or verb here? It makes a difference to the puzzle experts. Ben Zimmer explains:

Since English is weakly inflected (meaning that words are seldom explicitly modified to indicate their grammatical roles), many words can easily function as either noun or verb.

“Inflected” doesn’t precisely mean “modified” since a noun can be modified with an adjective and a verb with an adverb. Inflection is an alteration in the word itself to change its grammatical role, such as be-am-is-are-was or I-me-myself.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Obama Everywhere!

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Pamela Geller reports in her Atlas Shrugged blog that high school students in Massillon, Ohio (no doubt elsewhere...
Tim Tebow is offensive, insulting, and revolting to women, says NOW

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

College football star Tim Tebow wants to run a spot during the Superbowl telling the story of his mother, Pam...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

Re-Homed

I was simultaneously gladdened and saddened to learn about an English cat named Casper who used to ride the bus in Devon until he was struck by a car. His owner had “re-homed” him from a rescue centre. I haven’t seen the word “re-homed” before. Now we hope he is re-homed in an even better place. Maybe Casper has been repurposed too. He was a fine cat.

Unfraught Me

Heard somewhere: “We have a fraught relationship…” I thought for sure that “fraught” means “laden” and without a qualifier shouldn’t be used as a stand-alone adjective. But dict.org does show one example from WordNet similar to the one I quoted. It’s true that even when the word is qualified, it’s generally with something negative, as fraught with danger, fraught with tension, etc., so maybe it can stand alone as an adjective. But I still wouldn’t use “fraught” by itself without a following prepositional phrase, certainly not in conversation and probably not in more formal writing either. “Are you fraught? I’m fraught.”

The word is obviously related to “freight” but the root surprisingly means something like “merit” or “deserve”, which meaning has been completely lost now.

Hard to Read

In the January 20 cartoon, Agnes fakes her homework in an uber-literate style. The text is:

Teacher:  Agnes, this composition is unreadable.

Agnes:  I did it in the manner of Saint Hildegard of Bingen. I used “lingua ignota,” which is an unknown language, and “litterae ignotae,” an alternative alphabet.

Later, Agnes to Principal:  I don’t know why she sent me here…the look on her face was hard to read.

Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century saint, invented an alternative alphabet and language and wrote music too, which of course you can hear on YouTube.

Spelling Mistake

Supposedly the underwear bomber slipped through security because his name was misspelled on one list of security threats. If so, this is only one of the security misses that let Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab fly. It does, however, show that spelling may be more, not less, important than it used to be. You usually have to be exact in finding data in a computer database, if not on the Web.

            When humans check lists, they are capable of spotting spelling mistakes or alternatives, such as Abdul Mutallab, Abdulmutallab, Abdoul Moutallab, etc. but machines have both lesser and greater capabilities. Some search engines will give you alternative spellings (e.g. Google, “Did you mean: abdul mutallab ?”).

The airlines must not be using Soundex with their computerized manifests. Soundex is “a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling.” Example: While Douglas is a family name, for instance, one of my forebears spelled it Douglass, and there are several other spellings. Soundex is used in genealogy searches for family names, since the spelling of names changes. If you do a search on Rootsweb for Duglass using the Soundex converter, you get DESAULLES | DOUGLAS | DOUGLASS | DUCLOS (why Desaulles?). But a search for Abdul or Abdoul turns up nothing, though we know there are various phonetic spellings of that non-English name.

I did not know that

The word “apocalyptic” comes from the Greek “calypsos” meaning revelation. “Revelation” is comes from Latin, meaning the same thing. I always assumed that apocalypse had something to do with the end of the world, but it’s more like a cataclysmic event that reveals something, or the truth about something. It’s more about unveiling than destroying.

(Note: Fred says I wrote about this before in PO, but I don’t remember. It’s nice to learn something new even if it’s something I used to know.)

Mike the Sykes

Mike Sykes wrote:

On arriving in the VIth Form (11th Grade?), I acquired access to a library where by happy chance I found Poets at Play, an anthology by Cyril Alington, D.D., Dean of Durham, published by Methuen, London, 1942. I still have a copy, found for me by my wife years later. It contains many gems, including the following:

What, still alive at twenty-two,

A clean upstanding chap like you?

Why, if your throat is hard to slit,

Slit your girl's and swing for it!

Like enough you won't be glad

When they come to hang you, lad,

But bacon's not the only thing

That's cured by hanging from a string.

When the blotting pad of night

Sucks the latest drop of light,

Lads whose job is still to do

Shall whet their knives and think of you.

(parody of A Shropshire Lad by A E Housman)

Grabberwochy

'Twas Danzig, and the Swastikoves

    Did heil and hittle in the reich

All Nazi were the lindengroves

    And the neuraths julestreich. …

'Beware the Grabberwock, my son,

    The plans that spawn, the plots that hatch!

Beware the Jewjew Bird, and shun

    The fuhrious Bundesnatch!'

He took his aryan horde in hand

    Long time the Gestapo He taught

Then rested he by the Baltic Sea

    And stood awhile in thought.

And as a Polish oath they swore,

    The Grabberwoch, with lies aflame

Came goering down the corridor

    And goebbelled as it came.

Ein, zwei! ein, zwei! one in the eye

    For Polska folk, alas, alack.

He left them dead and as their head

    He came meinkampfing back.

'And hast thou ta'en thy lebensraum?

    Come to my arms, my rhenish boy!

Oh grabjous day! Sieg heil, be gay!'

    He strengthened through his Joy.

'Twas Danzig, and the swastikoves

    Did heil and hittle in the reich,

All nazi were the lindengroves

    And the neuraths julestreich.

            Michael Barsley

(I just happen to have those two available to copy & paste.)

I love the Shropshire Lad parody as well as The Shropshire Lad itself. A. E. Houseman made an amusing case for capital punishment.

Poets at Play seems to be unavailable now, unfortunately.

Finally Mike wrote regarding anacrostics (also called crostics):

Such puzzles seem to be unknown in the UK, but then I've never been much of a puzzle solver. Unlike my second cousin, who won The Times crossword (sample attached) competition so consistently that he refrained from entering in alternate years, to give others a chance.

(Sample was not attached, Mike. Send it again.) The English seem to be good at tricky puzzles so I’m surprised they don’t have this type.

Reading Test

One of the Examiner.com items I listed last week drew a comment from a reader (not a PO reader) who thought I was slamming the priest I quoted who made a little jest about ecology. I followed up with an explanatory comment of my own. I’d like to know if any PO readers read this bit the same way commenter Dan did? This is the one: Is fuel wasted on human survival? You all know my style, of course, but if you read carefully, did I miss my mark?

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Obama is so transparent he's losing weight

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

The Senate rejected Obama's proposal to form a task force to study the deficit, in other words, to study what...

Pouring millions into a 3-city rail system is like reviving the Pony Express

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Although polls show that the majority of Ohians don't want a new rail system connecting Cincinnati, Columbus,...

Someone's going to pay for this

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

After the surprising election of Scott Brown to the people's-Senate-seat-formerly-known-as-Ted-Kennedy's,...

Armed aide in Haiti

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and others have taken advantage of the disaster in Haiti to say that the U.S. has...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Translate into 12 languages, including two forms of Chinese, using Babelfish.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

______________________________________________________________________

BEBEING ENGLISH

You knew Ogden Nash! Can I touch you?

Anne DeBronkart wrote about the pelican limerick*:

Oh my God — for well over a half century I've attributed that gem to Ogden Nash, believing it was one of many observations about animals and a companion piece to Nash's "The Turtle":

"The turtle lives twixt plated decks

Which practically conceal its sex.

I think it clever of the turtle

In such a fix, to be so fertile."

Ogden Nash was a friend and contemporary of my father's, both growing up (as I did, sort of) in Rye, N.Y.   He was the first (and only) poet I ever met, and probably had a greater influence on my sense of humor that I might choose to acknowledge.  I apologize to Mr. Merritt, and applaud his ability to write in the style of Ogden Nash! —

It wasn't exactly a best-buddy sort of thing between us — he and my father occasionally got schnockered** together at "The Club" or at our house (less often — my stepmother disapproved of drinking unless she was invited...) and we had practically everything he ever published, but in spite of the fact that I thought he was the funniest man alive and adored him, it was mostly from afar.

I am so excited to learn that Anne DaBee actually met the great Ogden Nash. His were some of the bits of humorous verse I memorized as a young lass, including the turtle quatrain. Anne continued:

Strangely enough, my interest in (and fondness for) humorists didn't serve me well in school, where I was strongly encouraged to read other authors' work, and was firmly told more than once that the pun was the lowest form of humor. I still believe that a GOOD pun requires better than average intelligence to both create and understand, but I guess I'm still in the minority. Oh well — as one verbally-challenged politician said in a campaign speech many years ago, "Things will remain the same until they change." That's right up there with another one's "Difficult decisions are never easy to make." Both were elected to office...

I agree about good puns. Actually, any sort of humor in literature is seldom given the same respect as drama, romance, or tragedy, though it may cover the same subjects, just as intelligently or more so. Even humorous mystery novelists are less respected than the others, as I once heard Joan Hess complain. (I met Hess at a writer’s conference and later walked her through an AOL chat room I’d set up for Sisters in Crime, its first online presence, I believe.)

            When I was in school I loved humor writers too, but they were seldom in the syllabus. I often hid a library book behind my textbook in some classes, and the humorists were dangerous because I’d be snickering in history class or something and trying to hide it, and besides that, I really didn’t know any other kids with the same sense of literary humor. Dorkorama. Nerdinator. So Nash, Don Marquis, S. J. Perelman, and other funny guys (along with Nancy Drew) got me through my teens, God rest them. (Rich Lederer wasn’t extant as a writer till later in my life.)

* I first typed “limberick” which ought to be a word. Limericks do limber you up.

** I first heard “schnockered” from a college BF who got drunk a lot.

As for knowing famous poets, here’s Robert Browning’s comment:

:

Memorabilia
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at—
My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about.

For there I picked upon the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.

“Mr. Fix It”

A rare instance of someone who understands the misuse of quotation marks. “Mr. Fix It” drives a kluged-up truck. To fully appreciate this bit of punctuation, look at the picture of the truck then think of MR. FIX IT without quotation marks. Then try these:

            “Mr.” Fix It (handyman in drag?)

            Mr. “Fix” it (like our recent computer repairman)

            Mr. Fix “It” (something will get fixed but maybe not what you planned)

Overheard, Overheard in New York, New York

Cashier with cookbook: It's got a table of continents so you can see what's in it!
— Department Store, 225th St

Coworker: UPS didn't have the tracking information at first, but then they found it... Good thing, because I was about to blow a casket.

— Fordham University

Bebeing English

From former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey (does he have a first name?):

“Too often in recent years the call for a rational debate on mass migration has degenerated into name-calling and charges of racism,” Carey bemoaned in his newspaper op-ed. 

“Bemoaned” is always a transitive verb, as far as I know. Carey can bemoan name-calling, name-calling being the object of the transitive verb. Or he can just moan.

            “Prefixes that changed meaning instead of grammatic tense were always attached to the word they modified.” So says the everything2.com web site, which looks interesting and peculiar, if you have time for everything2. (I haven’t had time for everything1 or even everything yet.) In this case, however, “be” does not change the meaning of “moan” or the tense, but does change it from intransitive to transitive, which is not tense, that is, not about time.

            In Wikipedia, the prefix “be” is explained to indicate:

equipped with, covered with, beset with (pejorative or facetious)

EXAMPLES: bedeviled, becalm, bedazzle, bewitch

But the Wiki entry confusingly defines adjectives while mixing verbs and adjectives as examples. We don’t use devil as a verb anymore, except with boiled eggs, but to bedevil is familiar as a verb as bedeviled is as an adjective. We don’t use witch much as a verb either. Maybe deviling and witching are less in our consciousness. But we still know the feeling, thus bedevil and bewitch. In becalm and bedazzle, “be” seems to be an intensifier. In none of these four examples does the meaning seem to be changed pejoratively or facetiously. You can’t say bedevil and bewitch are pejorative compared to their root words. Bewitching is even complimentary.

            Is it still possible to prefix “be” to a word where it hasn’t been done before? How about … weed. I am going to weed the garden. If I said “I beweeded” the garden”, would it mean I really cleaned out the weeds, or I added weeds? “The garden was beweeded.” Sounds weedy to me. But the verb “weed” is a little dicey anyway. If I seed the garden, I plant seeds. If I weed the garden, I remove weeds. Beseeded, beweeded, let’s call the whole thing off. BUT … The garden is beseeded with morning glories. The garden is beweeded with bindweed.

Definitions

Anent the imperfection of crossword puzzle magazines, this letter from a puzzled reader appeared in the March 2010 Dell Official Variety Puzzles:

Anacrostics are among the features that I like best, yet P’s definition – “Disconcerted” for THREW – in number 7 from March 2009 is beyond reason.”

Editor’s reply: “If a sports upset disconcerted you, it would have thrown you too, right?”

The guy who wrote the letter is probably slapping his head over this one, but these tricky definitions are part of the game. They’re also the reason you can’t rely on a thesaurus for interesting variations in your vocabulary. But this is not the same as my complaint about defining “neutrality” as “peace” which is a philosophical or political assumption and not a definition.

Corex

Last week I meant that John McCarthy recommended The Anthologist (not George).

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Is fuel wasted on human survival?

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

A Norwegian priest, Fr. Reidar Voith of the Diocese of Oslo, on EWTN's program The Journey Home has an interest...

Tectonic plates of opinion collide over, under, and in Haiti

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The disaster in Haiti is causing all sorts of people to question why evil exists in the world, as if this is the...

A tale of two videos

Thursday, January 14, 2010

In the Cincinnati Enquirer today, two crime stories appear on page B2. Convicted murder Jerome Dennis turned...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2010. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere

__________________________________________________________________________

Bumper Sticker of the Week

“That was Zen, this is Tao”

Hoodie of the Week

Read “Friends don't let friends use Comic Sans” and then go to Amazon to buy the hoodie. But if you don’t mind the Comic Sans type font, I can make you custom hoodies, T-shirts, etc., featuring your own pet peeve in fonts, or beverages or whatever.

            Hating the Comic Sans font shows an ultra-refined sense of both culture and graphic design. It’s really just a simple sans serif font designed to resemble fonts used in cartoon captions, but we have evolved so highly that even a type font can suggest a world of meaning and can evoke an idea or an emotion; a meme. You wouldn’t use Comic Sans on a funeral program, for instance, or a wedding. But designers are sensitive creatures and overuse of anything can set their teeth on edge. (There’s probably a type font that suggests teeth being on edge.)

The Bustard and the Pelican

Rich Lederer wrote:

The author of the exquisite bustard limerick is George Vaill. … Here's another avian limerick of the highest order:

A wonderful bird is the pelican

His bill will hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Enough food for a week,

But I'm damned if I see how the helican

By Dixon Lanier Merritt

Agnes Explains Spelling

Little Agnes explains why they go on about spelling at school.

Bellpers

Fred noted that the humble bellhop has been promoted to bell captain, after being a bellboy and bellman. I can see why a grownup doesn’t want to be called a boy, but captain is just silly unless you have a lot of bellprivates or bellsergeants working under you. What was wrong with bellhop? I suppose people thought it was demeaning to be expected to hop to it when the desk clerk rings the bell. But nobody wants a bellsloth.

            I suppose somewhere they’re called bellpersons or bellpeople or bellstaff, but how about “belpers”, combining bell and helper with a hint of person? True, it’s also a bit reminiscent of belchers, but I like it. Tell all your friends, start using it when you go to hotels. Let’s see if we can start a belper wave across the country.

Almost Like Living in Lowell

A Massachusetts teacher with tenure lost her job because a judge determined her speech to be “utterly incomprehensible”. Is that any reason she shouldn’t be teaching? Phanna Rem Robishaw (she’s not from around there) is suing. She may not have learned to speak clearly since she emigrated and married an American many years ago, but she learned the legal culture. One legal argument for her is that native American* teachers aren’t required to take a fluency test. Robishaw got complaints, though. Another legal argument is that Robishaw is a victim of anti-Cambodian bias, which as we know is rampant in Lowell, Massachusetts.

            One of my sons had an Asian instructor of English composition in college who was hard to understand, but who insisted he knew English better than his American students. He may indeed have known the grammar better and even had a bigger vocabulary than the American freshmen, but as an ESL teacher, I have to say that pronunciation is a specialized aspect of ESL education and people who intend to teach in this country should have to work at it. I have students who write pretty well but whose speech is halting and hard to understand, which usually means their listening comprehension isn’t very good either.

            Now for an appropriate song that I heard on the radio when I moved to Massachusetts:

Living in Braintree

With you in Methuen

Is almost like living in Lowell.

For those of you who don’t live in Massachusetts, this song is about the difficulties of having a lover at commuting distance. In the Midwest, it wouldn’t be much more than zip zip down the highway, but it’s not that easy around there. Using public transportation, it could take an hour just to go five miles cross-town in Boston.

*Not to be confused with Native American. The other day I heard on TV, forget what program, that “Native American” is now “American Indian” again but I have no other source or explanation.

Couth Mike

Mike Sykes wrote:

RE: In Malaysia “Muslims [are] outraged

You could well say that there a people who seek out opportunities to be outraged. Could it be that they (subconsciously?) realise they are vulnerable to rational argument?

I could very well say that, and I doubt if any sort of realization figures into it.

RE: Pre-9/11, if I ever thought about Islam, which I didn’t, I would have assumed that Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, like Dios (Spanish), Dieu (French), Gott (German), Dio (Italian), Deus (Portuguese), God (Dutch), and other words in alphabets I can’t read. …

Don't the Jews have some similar attitude to 'Jehovah' (or Yahweh, or whatever)?

Not to the point of burning churches and murder, they don’t. They do omit the vowels in the name, called the Tetragrammaton. There are theological reasons for not speaking the name that we call Jehovah. However, you’re allowed to say “Allah” but it doesn’t translate and it’s apparently not supposed to be used by non-Muslims, at least in Malaysia.

RE: The theology is not clear to me, but it reminds me of the old joke that God is, of course, an Englishman, and not only that, an English gentleman.

Whaddayamean 'joke'?

OK. Don’t hurt me.

RE: Choate

Interesting article in the NY Times language column on why we have inchoate but not choat, insult but not sult, and so on.

And I'm couth! (in some sense)

In the old, old days, that would mean you are known. You are from around here.

The Anthologist

John McCarthy, who is a songwriter, recommended a book by Nicholson Baker called The Anthologist. The plot, which so far is rather thin, is about a writer whose girlfriend left him because he got into a funk and couldn’t complete a job to write an introduction to an anthology, but mostly it’s about poetry, detailed observations about rhyme and meter, which you might think would be even thinner stuff but is actually engrossing. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

            Once I had to write a paper in graduate school about a book, a physical book, and I chose an anthology of poetry much used in college, An Introduction to Poetry by X. J. Kennedy. I liked his taste in poems, but the book was bound with cheap glue and the pages came apart.

The PC

We’ve had partial success in restoring our computer files.

• The evil computer repairman (or his little techie) restored a lot of files but in no order, and some, maybe a lot, I hope not all, are blank, garbled, useless.
• Mozy said I canceled my backup account, which I didn’t.
• I had to talk to a nice lady in India to restore Norton 360 software, download the files, and cancel the automatic subscription renewal. Looks like only photos and music files were restored.
• The best source of old files was our two old hard drives, which we have carried from computer to computer for years, thanks to Fred’s foresight. The physical ones are in a plastic bag somewhere but the content continues in directories in all our new computers. All of that is good but only until our last upgrade, thus I’ve mostly lost everything from 2009 (except what I posted online).

Several people wrote with suggestions about backup, for which I thank you. One woman told me she has two external hard drives. For starters, I bought a flash drive to back up the laptop files, and we will be getting an external hard drive for backup.*

*Let me call your notice to the difference between “back up” (the verb) and “backup” (the noun and sometimes adjective).

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Harry Reid is a (white) politician

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Harry Reid is guilty of having been a bit stupid, but not mean or dishonest, at least in his remarks about Obama...
Waste not want not

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Jeffrey Folks writing for American Thinker reports that some radical environmentalists are proposing that people...
England is a source of terrorists

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy a plane and hundreds of passengers, and potentially thousands of...

______________________________________________

ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE ATParvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

______________________________________________

Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Dulce, utile, et decorum est pro patria scribere.

_________________________________________________________________________

Bustards

Not sure if Bill Roberts wrote this limerick, but he sent it in answer to “buzzards seldom work”:

Neither do bustards. (We were in Groton when Mohegan College had their Asimov-judged limerick contest.)

The bustard's an exquisite fowl

With minimal reason to growl:

He escapes what would be

Illegitimacy

By grace of a fortunate vowel.

You Say Tomato, I Am Outraged

In Malaysia “Muslims [are] outraged over a ruling this past weekend that allows the country’s 850,000 Roman Catholics to use the word Allah to describe God.” A Malaysian newspaper uses the word to mean God because some indigenous people have no such word in their language.

            Pre-9/11, if I ever thought about Islam, which I didn’t, I would have assumed that Allah is simply the Arabic word for God, like Dios (Spanish), Dieu (French), Gott (German), Dio (Italian), Deus (Portuguese), God (Dutch), and other words in alphabets I can’t read. But no.

Do Muslims think every other reference to God is not to the God but to their very own proprietary deity, though the Arabic word is pre-Islamic? There are those who think Allah is really Ba’al.    Do Muslims think there is more than one Supreme Being, with different names? The theology is not clear to me, but it reminds me of the old joke that God is, of course, an Englishman, and not only that, an English gentleman. Or, if the (English) King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.

Playing for the Other Team

Also in the news is Satan, who is, surprisingly, a Czech hockey player. Miroslav Satan is a handsome devil; he’s married and has a little Satan Junior.

Frankly, I’m Puzzled

It seems to me that word puzzle books contain more typos than they used to, and sometimes the word definitions are sloppy, such as making “peace” a clue for “neutrality”.

Along the same lines, when a young Grammy-nominated trio called Lady Antebellum sang the National Anthem at the Sugar Bowl the other day, one of the young men sang “Oh say can you see though the dawn’s early light” instead of “through” although it should be “by”. Can he have a clear idea of what the words actually mean?

Once I worked briefly as a freelance puzzle magazine proofreader, because I often work puzzles while I watch TV and I figured I’d make a few bucks doing something I do anyway. But proofreading needs more concentration. I ended up making about $2 an hour and decided that even if I developed more speed, I might not get up to minimum wage, plus I had to meet the deadlines. So though I’m pretty good at solving the puzzles, I gave it up.

The poor economy must be reducing proofreaders and proofreading hours, and I can’t help thinking that the very youngest college grads who might take this job for a while aren’t literate enough to do a good enough job. But what about the puzzle makers? Who are they? I always think of them as old (that is, older than me). I can accept the typos but not neutrality as peace.

The Education Front: Science Is for White People

The Berkeley school district may eliminate science labs and teachers because mostly white students are in the classes and do well in them. Who are the racists here? I’m forming a posse to make sure George Washington Carver is turning over in his grave. We’ll charter a bus to go to Tuskegee Institute, where he’s buried. I worked there for a few months, a long time ago and a long story ago.

Choate

Interesting article in the NY Times language column on why we have inchoate but not choat, insult but not sult, and so on. It’s because the prefix “in” of course does not always make a word into a negative. It has another meaning, to wit, in. People are tempted to drop the prefix, but you shouldn’t do it unless you’re joking, as is Allan Weiss in “The Domitable Knight”. (I don’t know if he wrote it or just copied it.) Some time ago I included a similar little story of false coinages in PO but can’t find it now (see Stupid Cheap below).

Low Lives

Somewhere I read “low lives” referring to bad people. It should have been “low lifes” even though ordinarily the plural of life is lives. In this case, “low life” is a special idiom that needs to be heard and seen as a whole, and shouldn’t follow the usual grammar rule. www.merriam-webster.com gives both forms but lowlifes, as a single word, is first. However, even the sound of “low life” is weakened when you exchange the hissy sound of F for the soft V sound.

Word Count

The Global Language Monitor reports that the most-used word in 2009 was Twitter. Other trendy words make up their top ten. They have an algorithm for figuring this out, which possibly produces a word from a predetermined list. Clearly Twitter can’t be the most commonly used word in English, which is probably “the” or “a” or something like that. And I doubt if it’s the most commonly used noun in conversation, or even in print, even discounting the function words. GLM must be compiling lists of words that the media like to latch on to.

Blue Moon

I missed the New Year’s Eve blue moon. As you may know, a blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. It doesn’t happen often, especially on New Year’s Eve.

Smash Mouth

I would have thought that “smash mouth” would be a joking reference to kissing. But no. Smash mouth football is rough football. I’ve seen way too much football lately.

The correct pronunciation of "Appalachia" is West Virginia

… but “I know the correct pronunciation of Appalachian” is a Facebook page. They say the correct pronunciation is AppaLATCHan, not AppaLAYchun. However, yourdictionary.com gives LAY as the first pronunciation and LATCH as the second. Wikipedia says (with phonetic symbols omitted):

While exploring inland along the northern coast of Florida in 1528, the members of the Narváez expedition, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca [“cow head”], found a Native American village near present-day Tallahassee, Florida whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen. … Now spelled "Appalachian", it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S. .. [In the north] the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced … with a third syllable like "lay". In southern U.S. dialects, … the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced … with a third syllable like the "la" in "latch". This pronunciation is favored in the "core" region in central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. The occasional use of the "sh" sound for the "ch" in the last syllable in northern dialects was popularized by Appalachian Trail organizations in New England in the early 20th century.

My family was from Appalachia and I never heard any of them use the word. They said, “I’m from West Virginia.” You wouldn’t expect someone from Denver to say “I’m from the Rockies” or someone from Hot Springs to say “I’m Ozarkian”.

Wiki Star

PO stalwart Dave DaBee (David DeBronkart to his other friends) is on Wikipedia. Check out the wonderful work he’s doing on behalf of patient participatory medicine.

Stupid Cheap

Our computer should come back from the shop today, we hope with some of the files still intact, years of work. The computer guy told us two or three times that he backs up everything before working on a computer, but he didn’t, and he screwed it up further while he fixed the original problem, then wanted to charge more money for partially restoring our files. Fred changed his mind about that.

We had backed up files at one time and another using Mozy and Norton 360. Mozy says I cancelled my account in October, which I didn’t and had no reason to do since it was a free service. Norton (Symantec), instead of answering a query, automatically renewed the service subscription. Haven’t heard back from them yet otherwise.

I bought a flash drive for the laptop and we’ll probably buy a backup hard drive for the desktop, which is what the low life computer guy calls “stupid cheap”: it’s cheap and it’s stupidly simple, but it works. I’m advising all of you to back up in more than one way. We’ve just experienced three different kinds of backup failure at the same time.

The Weekly Gizzard: Moi on Examiner.com

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

A war without uniforms

Besides the political motivations for doing so, treating jihadists like individual criminals is understandable only...

We the People, not We the Perfect, and definitely not We the Media

Friday, January 1, 2010

The announcer for today's Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena wound up the Tuskegee Airmen float entry by...

Have an Independent and Happy New Year!

Thursday, December 31, 2009

As the Cincinnati Independent Examiner, I wish you all a Happy and Independent New Year, no matter who you vote...

Restavek: Help child slaves in Haiti in the New Year

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Cincinnati is home to the Restavek Foundation, started by Jean Robert Cadet, who was once a child slave in Haiti....

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ONLINE PUBS    

I’m publishing for the Kindle digital reader with Amazon and now also on Lulu.com for download to computer and for printing. Most of these titles are available in both locations. Search for Rhonda Keith on Amazon.com Kindle store and Lulu.com.

      The Man from Scratch is about cloning, escort services, murder, and restaurants in Akron, Ohio, featuring Roxy Barbarino, writer for Adventuress Magazine. Novel.

      A Walk Around Stonehaven is a travel article on my trip to Scotland. Short article with photos. (Lulu.com only.)

      The Wish Book is fantasy-suspense-romance featuring the old Sears Roebuck catalogues. Novella.

      Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn is about a young gambler who finds himself upright in a cornfield in Kansas with his feet encased in a tub of concrete; how would you get out of a spot like that? Short story.

      Still Ridge is about a young woman who moves from Boston to Appalachia and finds there are two kinds of moonshine, the good kind and the kind that can kill you. Short story.

      Whither Spooning? asks whether synchronized spooning can be admitted to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Humorous sports article.

      Blood, Sweat, Tears, and Cats: One woman's tale of menopause, in which I learn that the body is predictive; I perceive that I am like my cat; and I find love. Autobiographical essay.

      Parvum Opus Volume I. The first year (December 2002 through 2003). You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get PO’ed. Collection of columns.

10% discount on my Lulu publications:

Browse to: http://www.lulu.com/landing/lulu_coupon_10?a=4001629

Click "Buy" and enter 'BESTSELLER10' at checkout.

Save 10% on your order.

NEW PRODUCTS:

Scot Tartans: T-shirts and more (custom orders available).

T-Shirts & mug: FRESH  PICT, with two ancient Pictish designs

BUMPER STICKER: FRESH  PICT, white on blue, with 10th Century Pict-Scot Merman Cross (blue on white also available)

SIGG WATER BOTTLE, ORGANIC T-SHIRTS IN GREAT COLORS, MINI-CAMERAS, DENIM SHIRTS, MUGS, TOTE BAGS, MOUSE PAD, TEDDY BEAR, AND MUCH MORE AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: (NOTE: There are problems viewing this site with Firefox but Earthlink seems OK.)

NEW: Click to Embiggen boxer shorts

Eschew Obfuscation bumper sticker

FRESH  PICT items

Graphic covers of my books

Dulce, Utile, et Decorum (Sweet, Useful, and Proper), title of new collection of Parvum Opus, Volume I

BUMPER STICKER: Dulce, Utile, et Decorum

No Pain, No Pain

Star o’ the Bar

Veritas Vincit (Truth Conquers) with Keith clan Catti insignia

Flash in the Pants

If you're so smart why aren't you me?

PWE (Protestant Work Ethic)

I am here maternity tops

I eat dead things (doggy shirt, pet dishes, and BBQ apron)

If you don’t see exactly what you want — a particular design or text on a particular item — let me know and I’ll customize products for you.

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Trivium pursuit ~ rhetoric, grammar, and logic, or reading, writing, and reckoning: Parvum Opus discusses  language, education, journalism, culture, and more. Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Editorial input provided by Fred Stephens. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2009. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.